Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:"Still in use by the US military" (Score 1) 128

Meanwhile, Spain managed not to lose any in accidents, primarily by using them in the interceptor role for which they were originally designed and not as the fighter-bombers that Lockheed tried to turn them into.

Besides, by the time the F-104G came around, Johnson was working on the U-2 and the SR-71.

Comment Re:"Still in use by the US military" (Score 1) 128

When? The U-2 was designed by Kelly Johnson, a man who enforced simplicity wherever possible and valued the lives of everyone around his planes. Having anyone run up to it or chase it in a truck to install pogos while it was moving would risk a collision or injury, or both. Besides, the entire aircraft is only 16 feet tall, and the wings are maybe a third of that off the ground.

As far as I know, the plane has always landed like that, and Kelly Johnson knew it would. That kind of practice doesn't start showing up decades or even years later.

Comment Re: This is a problem now? (Score 1) 128

It wasn't in LAX airspace (that caps out at 10,000 feet), but in LA Center's coverage area, which oversees airspace in Southern and Central California and parts of Nevada, Utah, and Arizona that isn't controlled by airports or by approach/departure controllers. The entire system is tied together to handle transitions from one controlling agency (or controller within an agency) to another.

As an aside, LAX's airspace extends various distances from the airport with the most distant point about 25 miles to the east, depending on the altitude. At any given time, there may be dozens of aircraft within its airspace on approach or departure, or transitioning through to other destinations.

Comment Re:And the question of the day is... (Score 1) 327

I just went and checked on a number of search engines to see who does this. I used the Top 15 engines (the site draws from Alexa's rankings, which I know are borderline useless but they seem to suffice for this). In each case, I searched for "slashdot" and checked the results by right-clicking on the appropriate link, copying, and pasting into the URL bar to inspect the results. (I substituted Baidu for Contenko since the latter didn't return any results and Baidu is pretty popular, and added Yandex and IxQuick for popularity reasons as well.)

Search engines that use hidden redirects:
-- Alhea (does not hide URLs displayed at the bottom of the page, but also appears to be part of InfoSpace)
-- Baidu
-- Dogpile
-- Google
-- Info.com (does not hide URLs displayed at the bottom of the page, but also appears to be part of InfoSpace)
-- InfoSpace (does not hide URLs displayed at the bottom of the page)
-- MyWebSearch (does not hide URLs displayed at the bottom of the page)
-- Webcrawler
-- Yahoo
-- Yandex

Search engines that do not use hidden redirects and link directly to result:
-- AOL (has JavaScript onclick action)
-- Ask (has JavaScript onmousedown action)
-- Bing (sends information on link click to www.bing.com/fd/ls/GLinkPing.aspx)
-- Blekko
-- DuckDuckGo (sends information on link click to r.duckduckgo.com/l/)
-- IxQuick (has JavaScript onClick action)
-- Wow (has JavaScript onclick action)

Blekko appears to be the only one that doesn't send anything in any fashion back to the server. That doesn't mean they don't log your IP address or your search terms, of course. And their display method leaves much to be desired.

So which is worse? Using a hidden redirect that can be detected if you right-click on the link and paste it somewhere? Or sending back where you go by JavaScript that is sometimes visible to someone with a modicum of code knowledge and sometimes requires either much deeper analysis or watching the URLs that are called?

As ultranova said, you're getting upset over something that search engines have very solid reasons to do so they can rate the pages and return better results for the searcher.

Comment Re:Just like Nuclear Fusion (Score 1) 256

It's worth a thought experiment. A submarine fuel facility has the advantage of not being affected much by the surface seas. Perhaps it wouldn't go deep, but instead remain about 60 feet or so underwater. A float mechanism could be used to hoist the hoses to the surface, and then the hoses could be connected for fueling. This would keep the fueling platform itself stable and reduce the risks involved in a collision. It would probably require a significant re-engineering of the coupling mechanism, and I'm not sure how refueling underway would be accomplished, but maybe someone else has an idea.

Comment Re: Great Headline (Score 1) 103

Wreckage of AF447 (including bodies) was found within the first couple of days, so they knew for certain there was a water impact and approximately where. It took time to find the main wreckage, but it was located, and in fact new analysis of sonar data collected by a French sub within the first week after the crash was critical in finding it. The sonar had heard the FDR pings, but it was below the equipment's identification threshold at the time.

Here, a water impact is presumed but not certain. Aside from the engine pings, there's very little to go on, and even the satellite images and the civilian sighting of a pallet and belts the other day may be nothing more than shipping equipment that fell overboard.

Comment Re:We need a US base in the Ukraine (Score 1) 623

China and India may become friendlier and work together on more issues, but will probably not become allies in the short term. Their interests do not intersect well enough, the Himalayas prevent significant cross-training or war games to allow their militaries to interoperate, and both are interested in expanding their influence over fellow Asian states. China's belligerence over claimed oceanic territory and their growing navy threatens Indian trade. India's growing population seeks food supplies that China may need for its own population.

They're unlikely to become very close. Fortunately, the same Himalayas that help prevent them from becoming close also make a war between them unlikely because neither side could actually hold territory. There is a risk of nuclear exchange, but the rest of the world has strong reason to keep that from becoming likely.

Comment Re:We need a US base in the Ukraine (Score 1) 623

Calling the Warsaw Pact "allies" is perhaps a bit of a misnomer. Even within the governments that nominally looked to Moscow for guidance and direction, there was often a great deal of quiet grumbling. When Czechoslovakia was invaded by Soviet troops, many of the Eastern European countries protested privately to Moscow but were either ignored or threatened into submission. They did so, knowing that the West wasn't about to get involved in their affairs because the risk of war was too high.

The same thing is happening now. As much as the West would like to see Ukraine become closer, it's not about to risk outright war with Russia over it. This is going to be played out over years or decades.

Comment Re:Sour grapes (Score 1) 381

That's an artifact of how movie accounting is done. The studios tack on so many fees and have access to so much of the gross that the subsidiary companies (almost always used when filming movies, with one created per movie) almost never show a net profit. The studios show a profit, of course, due to the "fees" they charge. So a movie production may rarely make a profit, but an individual movie, when factored through the entire revenue stream, often does (though many are spectacular failures and the studio loses money on them, too).

Submission + - Woman attacked in San Francisco bar for wearing Google Glass

Martin Blank writes: Sarah Slocum, an early adopter of Google Glass, was bar hopping with friends in San Francisco when a few people in the bar took issue with the eyewear when she was demonstrating it to another patron even though she wasn't recording. When she felt threatened, she informed them that she would start recording. Two of them approached her, yelling and throwing a bar rag at her, and ultimately ripping the Glass from her face and running from the bar with it. She gave chase and eventually got the Glass back, but her purse was gone when she returned to the bar. This physical level of hostility is unusual, but discomfort with Glass is common, especially among those who don't understand how it works. Given that much more hidden spy cameras are available for far less than the $1500 cost of Glass, what will it take for general acceptance to finally take hold?

Comment Re:Time to end the military industrial complex (Score 1) 506

A stall is not "plummet to the ground." Any pilot competent with his plane should in most cases be able to recover from a stall with minimal loss of altitude. This varies by the aircraft, but it's not an automatic lethal event. The primary risk that a U-2 carries in stalling while at maximum altitude is dipping down into radar or SAM range and/or losing what little maneuverability the plane does have, plus possibly additional airframe wear.

Slashdot Top Deals

An Ada exception is when a routine gets in trouble and says 'Beam me up, Scotty'.

Working...